Menu

SCHEDULE

Sessions

It turns out people unconsciously program their brains to make decisions based on that inner critic instead of what they know they can do. Amazingly, neuroscience proves you can hack your brain, rewire it, and start making decisions that move you toward the life of your dreams. Even better, it’s fast. This session shows you how.

How to know if your brain is unconsciously wired to sabotage your goals.

How to shut up that inner critic taking you off course.

A simple, neuroscientifically verified technique that rewires the brain for success.

Can you imagine what that inner critic does to customer, team, and vendor relationships? We all know that the wrong internal messaging causes stakeholders to back away. With the right beliefs, however, everybody leans in, brings their friends along, and become raving fans.

The ability to effectively identify and manage project stakeholders and risks significantly improves the chances of successful project execution and organizational success. The Project Manager’s ability to seek agreement on the goals and risks of the project among the key project stakeholders, including the project team, management and the customer, plays a large part in the project’s success. Failure to do so may expose the project to unnecessary delays, missed opportunities, negative financial impacts, and potential damage to the organization’s reputation.

A powerful method by which to approach this is by the integration of two key items; critical project risk management principles and key project leadership attributes. When properly integrated, these two result in a catapult effect in project and stakeholder management and overall project performance. The integration of these is known as Project Management Leadership.

In the recent years a growing trend of executives and project managers now consider that the project success lies more “in the eye of the beholder”, and less in simply meeting the targets on Triple Constraint dimensions. Introduced as Stakeholder Management in PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition, this knowledge area is already evolving into Stakeholder Engagement. Aligned with PMBOK® Guide 6th Edition structure for Stakeholders’ Engagement, this versatile session combines traditional instruction methods with real-life examples as well as hands-on exercises and simulations to provide the participants with practical tools and techniques to:

The session will also provide participants with the opportunity to understand and practice proven techniques and methods, recently published in “A Pocket Guide to Stakeholders’ Management Engagement”, for discovering and mapping stakeholders’ relationships and influencing people using a formal framework and systematic approach.

Methodology. This session covers the entire life-cycle of stakeholders’ engagement, from day 0 to project sign-off. Each topic is introduced through traditional instruction material describing not only what to do but also how to do it efficiently, enhanced with reallife examples that showcase each concept in the day-to-day activities. Each segment of the workshop is concluded with hands-on exercises and/or simulations, providing a safe environment to practice influencing people, change facilitation, successful negotiation and conflict resolution.

Program Portfolio Management (PPM) is the primary process that underlies execution of an organization's business strategy. Through PPM, we prioritize, fund, oversee, and evaluate our projects. Effective PPM ensures that we do the right projects at the right time and helps us to maximize the business value that we obtain from each project. This workshop demonstrates tools used to measure cost and map strategic objectives, quality, and project/program feasibility in organizational value proposition. At the conclusion of this session, participants should be able to use specific techniques to improve project health and imply the best tool(s) for the identified project/program type.

The world is getting smaller, especially when it comes to the world of business. Mark Hehl published a book that chronicles his experiences assisting many organizations with operational excellence and technology transfer projects in over forty countries covering multiple industries / technologies. During his travels and extended stays in five continents, he encountered a variety of amusing experiences, cross-cultural faux pas and was exposed to many production facilities (too many to count). Some of these organizations were well managed and others were poorly run. This presentation highlights some of these experiences described in his book Amusing Confessions of an International Consultant.

Those in attendance will be entertained and enlightened by his humorous stories, examples of cultural mistakes and highlights of projects that resulted is failure / lost revenue. A must for professionals who are interested in achieving success and a culture of excellence in a global environment.

For the first time in history, five generations will soon be working side by side. But whether this multi-generational workplace feels happy and productive or challenging and stressful is, in large part, up to you! How should you relate to managers and co-workers of different age groups? What can you do to encourage co-workers of different generations to work productively? How do you motivate someone much older or much younger than you? To hear more about this "Generation Gap" at work, plan to attend this most exciting and informative presentation—it will surely be one that you won't want to miss!

At the conclusion of this session, participants should be able to learn the different characteristics of each generation in the workplace and identify common breakdowns between generations and how to resolve them.

Hybrid has gained popularity due to its ability to effectively respond to issues as they arise, improve stakeholder satisfaction, and increase focus on value-driven delivery. A major challenge to many project managers is knowing how to effectively plan, identify, and manage risks when using hybrid approaches. This presentation addresses how to integrate proven risk management techniques with hybrid approaches to increase the probability of project and organizational success. At the conclusion of this session, participants should be able to develop proper project risk management statements required to support hybrid approaches to project management and apply proven risk management techniques, which every project manager should address as part of any hybrid approach.

George Jucan, PMP, MPM An Influencing Framework for Stakeholders' Engagement

In the recent years a growing trend of executives and project managers now consider that the project success lies more “in the eye of the beholder”, and less in simply meeting the targets on Triple Constraint dimensions. Introduced as Stakeholder Management in PMBOK® Guide – 5th Edition, this area is already evolving into Stakeholder Engagement. Stakeholders are people, and people can be influenced to see what you want them to see, and to want to do what you want them to do! All project managers use influencing on their day to day activity, but most do so instinctively and, in most cases, very inefficiently.

This versatile session combines traditional instruction methods with real-life examples as well as hands-on exercises and simulations to provide the participants with practical tools and techniques to:

Understand how to use influencing to obtain stakeholders’ engagement and ultimately achieve project success.

Methodology. Combines traditional instruction with real life examples and hands-on exercises and simulations; provides practical tools and techniques to identify stakeholders and their visible/hidden relationships; and demonstrates the use the Stakeholders Map and the Influencing Framework to effectively and efficiently engage stakeholders.

Objectives. Realize that stakeholders are not managed but engaged! Learn how to use stakeholder engagement to achieve project success. Practice tools and techniques to improve your ability to engage project stakeholders.

Kevin Wozniak, MBA, PMP, FLMI, ITIL 4th and Goal: Having a Game Plan to Avoid Last Minute Heroics

Much like a football game, where 4th and goal can end up deciding the outcome of the game, project managers and PMO directors many times must face critical decisions late in the game with little room for error. That can be the deciding factor between project success and failure. This presentation will use football analogies and crowd participation to make play calls for the PMO to make the right decisions to ensure success. At the conclusion of this session, participants should be able to describe how to assess and address various management styles to help lead your team and discuss strategies to properly game plan to be prepared for success and to cover all scenarios.

Mark Hehl A “Sure Fire” Way to Ensure Schedule Performance using Lean & Six Sigma tools

Project Managers are usually confronted with situations and events that have a negative effect on the established schedule and they are still expected to bring the project in on time. One proven method to improve schedule compliance is to employ select Six Sigma methodologies to selected processes. This analytical improvement technique provides project teams, who play to win, with an avenue to reduce the time required to complete a selected process without reducing quality.

Topics covered:

“I will give you anything but more time” – What every Project Manager faces

The Schedule Squeeze

“Parkinson’s Law”

Improving Schedule Performance

The Key – Process Mapping (PM)

Using Process Mapping to maintain/reduce scheduled tasks

Implementing improvements

Identifying processes to map & improve

Playing to win using a Rapid Results approach

Objective. Provide Project Managers who play to win with critical tools to identify risks and reduce the time it takes to complete processes that effect project schedules.

Using interpersonal skills, customer relationship management, and technical know-how to increase project visibility and priority across your organization. Includes managing up, down, and around stakeholders for alignment of business objectives and demand.

Speaker Bios

Jack Allen, PhD, is Adjunct Professor of Business Ethics at Concordia University, Texas, and trains examiners for the Ethics in Business and Community Award. Jack’s Ph.D. is in ethics and managerial psychology with emphasis in cultural reconciliation and economics.

Jack has built 11 successful organizations and learned from some epic failures. He’s learned the mindset, ethics, motivational tactics, neuroscience, and practical skills necessary to find successful, abundant living. His “no BS” approach gives fast, actionable results, not hazy woo-woo. Jack has delighted over 100,000 people and annoyed at least that many with audiences in every major US city as well as Ireland, Kenya, Rwanda, and Guatemala. He’s a funny, candid, thought-provocateur.

Cindricka L. Arrington, MCS, MSPM, MBA, is an accomplished business and IT operations leader with 17 years’ experience at several Fortune 500 companies in project/program management, marketing, medical device demand planning, and logistics. Recipient of various prestigious company, community, and academic awards including the Dr. Harold Kerzner Project Management Scholarship and Women of Excellence 2017 Honoree by the New Tri-State Defender, Memphis, TN. Cindricka is a PMO program manager at Medtronic Spinal Business.

Mark Hehl, MBA, is Senior Consultant with The DESARA Group. His efforts have produced significant increases in quality, meaningful reductions in lead times and substantial cost savings. Previously, Mr. Hehl was Manager of Worldwide Quality for The Timex Corporation. During his tenure, he implemented quality improvement and Six Sigma initiatives with the supply base in China. Mr. Heil's work experience spans many industries including: aerospace, metal parts, plastics, glass, consumer products, pharmaceuticals, textiles, cosmetics and automotive. He holds a BS Degree in Electrical Engineering from the New York Institute of Technology and a MS Degree in Management from the Polytechnic Institute of New York. He was a Delegate and featured presenter (Quality Improvement in China) at the Third China-American Quality Symposium held in Shanghai, China, September 2004. Mr. Hehl spends a significant amount of time in China and other offshore locations assisting his clients and their suppliers on various sourcing and improvement projects. He is very familiar with Chinese culture and ways of conducting business there.

George Jucan, PMP, MPM, is an internationally recognized project management expert, currently leading the Canadian Committee at International Organization of Standardization (ISO) for the establishment of Project, Programme, and Portfolio Management family of standards. He is well known as a successful project management consultant, speaker at public events, trainer. and author of high-impact project management articles.

Rob Kurtz, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, ITIL, recently completed 4 1/2 years as VP of Membership for the PMI Metro St. Louis Chapter. He initially joined the chapter in 2006 upon earning his PMP credential and has been involved with PMI ever since. As a Sr. Program Manager for CenturyLink’s Managed Services Business Unit, he works closely with young teams of engineers and developers in both plan-driven and agile projects in monitoring and automation. As a result of his passion to help others grow, Rob has been invited to speak at numerous events including PMI chapters, PMI Region Meetings, PMI Leadership Institute Meetings, PMI Global Conference, and the Federal Reserve Bank. He holds current PMI-ACP, PMP, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), and ITIL certifications. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Texas State University and a master’s degree in Information Technology Management.

Laszlo Retfalvi, P.Eng, PMP, RMP, is an award-winning instructor, author, and coach. He is an excellent communicator with a proven ability to motivate individuals to meet challenging objectives and add business value. A self-starter, he demonstrates a strong industry presence through active involvement in industry and educational organizations. Mr. Retfalvi holds P.Eng, PMI PMP, and Risk Management Professional Certifications.

Kevin Wozniak, MBA, PMP, FLMI, ITIL, is a Program Management Director for AIG in the Distribution Technology department. He has over 20 years of experience in IT leadership, having managed direct reports, projects, and programs. He is also a volunteer youth coach in Montgomery, Texas, where he has resided since 2010 after relocating with his family from Wisconsin.